


Night Out

by YamiTami



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Die this is really not a good idea, Gen, Humanstuck, Panic Attack, Teamsverse, you're lucky bro's nice in this universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-17
Updated: 2012-10-17
Packaged: 2017-11-16 12:28:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/539426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YamiTami/pseuds/YamiTami
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Die goes out to get a signature from some rapping puppet guy to prove that his own voodoo doll collection is not lame. While he is typically one of the more responsible members of The Felt, which really isn't saying all that much, when he lets his irritation do the thinking he tends to get himself into unpleasant situations.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Night Out

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is still really rough and unpolished but honestly I'm sick of looking at it so here it is in all it's semi-betaed glory.
> 
> Also please don't message me about Bro's name, this is part of the Teamsverse universe and I had already written him as Matt Strider before Act6 came out and I don't fell like going back and changing every instance since he's not exactly Dirk anyway,

Die purposefully strode down the sidewalk, slowing only when he had to weave around a pack of inebriated college students. Which was often. Of course, it was often. They were straddling midnight between Thursday and Friday, the last day of finals and the first day of summer freedom. To make matters worse he was passing through the type of zoning only seen in a college town. He'd already navigated the horrorshow of dumb kids leaving campus in the middle of the night and nearly hitting anyone they passed with their cars and had somehow made it unscathed to the area bordering the campus, which was filled with fast food, bookstores, overpriced boutiques, and overprices apartments. There were also a number of bars and pubs in the area, which accounted for some of the staggering Die saw but not all of it.

He spotted a girl weighted down with spent glowsticks, offensively glittery lipstick, and neon green false eyelashes to match her 'artfully' ripped tights. He felt a stab of irritation towards Stitch's insistence on correcting Die's apparent lack of style—or rather, threatening not to let him back in the manor until he stopped wearing mismatching colors. If that girl could walk down the street looking like she did with out anyone gasping in horror then Die didn't see why he should get clucked at for wearing a forest green vest with a pale pink tie and deep amethyst shirt.

He also didn't see why Stitch wouldn't leave him alone when their employer's stepgranddaughter was a veritable chromatic disaster, though she at least could be trusted to wear things that hadn't been intentionally destroyed unlike glowstick-girl. Die shook his head and took that thought back as soon as he thought it; the girl was a chromatic disaster but she actually had a reason for it. Primarily it was stubbornness and the fact that she could delight in saying 'yes' to the people who asked her if she was blind, which was an excellent reason in Die's opinion, and there was also the more mundane reason that it was easier for her to tell saturated colors apart.

Regardless of her reasons, Die could never stay cross at Terezi, even in the privacy of his own mind. She used to like to hear his stories about the bayou and the practices of voodoo, and even though she had long since outgrown her need for a caretaker she still stopped by to see him often enough. It was she who suggested he 'show' his coworkers who was cool. This came in the wake of a day spent grumbling and stewing over some very rude comments about his dolls and puppets. Terezi had told him about some performance involving both rap and a ventriloquist puppet, and had assured him that while he would hate the music the man performing was the epitome of cool. She then smiled her sharky smile at a spot just over his shoulder and suggested that Die go get one of his dolls autographed.

Die had dismissed the idea at the time and changed the subject to zombi and rainbow sherbet ice cream, but after she left and the day wore on he couldn't get the notion out of his head. It hadn't helped when had bent down to pick up some utensil or other that Eggs had dropped and a doll had fallen out of his pocket. A certain twitchy over-caffeinated jerk had made a snide comment, which Die could ignore easily except that Crowbar had snickered.

With renewed confidence Die walked on towards the address Terezi had given him. As soon as he ducked out of the kitchen, mortified and furious, Die had gone straight to his room and he picked out a palm-sized doll he'd just finished making. It wasn't part of his craft, just something to try out a few new ideas. The body was crocheted out of undyed cornsilk yarn and it sported a little vest made of muslin, which he had woven himself. The cloth would make for a flat surface to be signed, he had thought, and he pocketed a marker as well just in case the musician didn't have one. His goal solidly in mind he had donned his vest and hat, gotten lectured by Stitch outside his bedroom door, and had been wished a safe journey by Clover as he slipped out of the old servant's entrance.

It was only ten when he left and with a few hours to spare he decided to walk the distance. It was no short stroll but he was used to such things. His usual response to being overwhelmed by his coworker's habits was to walk through the old neighborhoods and the old gardens. Not that he'd rather work anywhere else, but given that most of them lived in the manor, Die rarely had a break from their nonsense. Sometimes he wondered how the Doctor could stand their constant presence—and Die could admit that he could be trying at times as well, just so long as he didn't have to admit it out loud—but then again Doc was the type of man who would overlook a staggering amount of what he called 'eccentricity' in exchange for loyalty.

Die took a winding route to pass by his favorite gardens and parks, the smell of the greenery and sound of running water steadying his trembling hands but doing nothing to lessen his righteous anger, and reached the club in question half an hour after the show had been scheduled to start. By the door was a poster with the event details and in Die's opinion it looked as though a five year old had drawn it while having a seizure but he supposed that it was some joke or fad that he was too old to understand. 'Out of touch' was what he'd heard earlier that day but if he thought about it as a matter of being of a different generation then he wouldn't grit his teeth.

A group of kids dressed in skinny jeans and tank tops stepped behind him to join the blessedly short line—Die's momentum had kept him from thinking about how out of place he was going to be and stopping was giving him time to think about it—and after a moment he heard a call of 'dude'.

A couple more 'dude's and Die realized they were being directed at him. Hunching his shoulders he turned to the kids behind him and readied for the worst. Die expected to be poked at, or to be asked what he was doing there, or something else along those lines. He didn't expect what actually happened.

"Dude!" the boy had said appreciatively. "Niiiiiiice hat."

Die self-consciously adjusted his tophat as four more sets of eyes settled on his head. To his bafflement the rest of the group chimed in with various degrees of awesome. He ducked his head self-consciously and was glad when the bouncer cleared his throat and asked for the cover charge. In spite of himself, Die felt an embarrassed yet pleased flush wash over his cheeks. He didn't come there seeking approval, and he certainly wasn't going to put much stock in the opinion of children in pants so tight it's a wonder nothing fell off, but still. His hat was 'rad'.

He ducked into the club and drifted to a dim—or at least, dimmer—corner of the club where he didn't seem in as much danger of being humped by someone half his age. To Die's absolute non-astonishment the music could only charitably be called noise. The musician had a nice enough voice but instead of singing he barked out the lyrics in a semi-spoken tone. 'Rap', Die thought, making a face. However, he was capable of giving credit where credit was due and while the music could be barely called as such the intended audience seemed to be having a good time. If a person does something they should do it well, be it cooking gourmet steak or flipping burgers, and Die had to grudgingly respect the musician for owning his craft. Perhaps, Die thought, he could hold a straight face when he asked for the man’s autograph.

Die paid attention to the music long enough to tell that the point of the song was so that the musician could embarrass his younger brother. Die tuned out the words about the time the sibling leapt onto the stage and grabbed a mic—at least he hoped that wearing sunglasses in a darkened room was an illness contained to the family—and he closed his eyes to better focus on the drums and the bass. It was the one part of this type of music Die could actually approve of; the lyrics were obnoxious, the higher notes merely shrouding bits of irrelevant glitter, but the bare beat hidden under all that frivolous garbage, now that was something real. Die could feel the throbbing pulse in his bones, could still hear the faraway din of all those bodies moving in the unified chaos of instinct, and the energy it created was palpable.

It was real enough, primal enough, that Die felt his clutch on the anger weaken. The swirling cloud of thick red smoke was drawn out of his body and consumed by the sparking play of lights dancing throughout the crowd.

When Die opened his eyes his momentum had been lost. The shield of his rage was gone. There was naught but a barrier of tissue paper between him and the crowd, the teeming mass of bodies, the overwhelming screech of the music, the colored lights, the swirling stars of the many glowsticks being flung about in gleaming arcs, and as Die stood there truly seeing the room for the first time, seeing how much he didn’t belong, he felt the suddenly too small room start to cave in and with his throat already lancing white streaks of fire down to the tips of his lungs he ducked into the first opening he saw. It wasn’t the exit but rather was a hallway with a few doors on either side and a couple doing their best to swallow each other’s tongues. They were thankfully too involved in each other to notice Die slipping past them, the music was thankfully too loud for them to hear the way he gulped for air. He could see the light like dying embers, the red beacon of the exit sign, but then he thought about running into some kid having a smoke outside the door with no music or other person’s spit to distract them and instead he ducked into the first dark gateway he came to.

Die blurrily took in the fact that he was in a storage room of some sort, half in dust and half new additions, but as the intended purpose of the room was an extraneous bit of trivia to someone in his state he disregarded it. All that mattered is that it was dark and that he would be left to his anxiety attack alone.

Underneath the edge of hysteria he berated himself for being so stupid; there he was far from home without a single soothing remedy. No pills, no tranquilizers, no herbal infusions, not even a cup of coffee. For one wild second he considered the bar, but that would require interacting with the hoard. If Die only had the guarantee that they’d all stay focused on the musician, that the bartender would be so tired of being psychologist that they’d ignore the panic in his eyes, then he might have been able to make the trip. But, for all the cynical things he’d ever said about the state of the world, Die knew that at least a few of the kids out there would take notice and try to help him. Their intentions might be good but ultimately they would make it so much worse, as their ‘help’ would mean more eyes on him, people asking him questions he didn’t have the breath to answer, bodies crowded in as they put well meaning but wholly unwanted hands on him, and absolutely worst of all Die would have to suffer the pity and sympathies of a bunch of dumb college kids.

He stayed where he was.

After an indeterminable amount of time—it was probably no more than ten minutes but anything seemed like days when one was in the clutches of an anxiety attack—Die reached the more manageable stage. His breaths were still shallow but he was no longer in danger of passing out, he was able to somewhat relax the vice-like grip on his own arms, and while his body was still paralyzed his mind began to function again. He hated being reduced to no more than a terrified mindless animal and welcomed the return to being a terrified intelligent human with as much gratitude as he could muster.

Die realized that the whole ordeal was a long time coming, and if he hadn’t been so intent on riding the train of resentment and frustration right into a mountainside then he could have done it in the safety of his room. Instead he had continued to let the sharp comments of the others get to him, let it fuel the raging engine, and he was able to ignore the signs until he let his guard down a fraction and it all came crashing down. Die had tried to make sure that everything in the manor was perfect since butting heads with his sons-in-law had the Doctor in a foul mood. A lot of Die’s pride was tied up in the fact that he could read his employer’s perpetually expressionless face and tell what the situation called for. But his plans had been thwarted by a few mishaps—an electrical failure in the south wing, the gardener’s tank springing a leak and turning a third of the herb beds into a bog, the conking out of the master’s favorite antique car which led to lengthy and costly repairs—all minor and all the result of normal wear and tear, nothing that was Die’s or anyone’s fault, but they were horribly timed.

Strictly logically, Die knew that Doctor Scratch didn’t hold any of that against him. Die had smoothly dealt with each problem in turn as was his duty as butler, and in fact his employer had personally thanked him for kicking Doze into high gear when it came to repairing the car. But logic had little to do with anxiety. Die couldn’t shake the feeling that he had failed in some way, this little nagging annoyance like an itching mosquito bite. That he could have dealt with easily enough—in time fortunes would turn and things would behave properly—but then the lady of the house decided that it was time again to test the manor’s security. It was a perfectly reasonable course of action, of course, in fact they were overdue. The faux break in was foiled quickly and Die had been very pleased with that, but dreaded the inevitable teasing that came with such an event. The first time such a test had occurred Die had been ‘killed’ by a slit throat very early in the hired break in. He spent most of that night as a corpse stuffed in a closet and the bold line of red permanent marker across his throat had taken a week to completely fade. A number of Die’s coworkers made a point of bringing it up any time manor security was fiddled with.

That added on to the self-depreciation going on about the minor problems and then even the slightest comment seemed barbed. He had stewed and had ignored the signs until it was too late to do anything but ride out the episode.

Though it was open air between Die and the speakers there was enough distance and twists and turns that the detail of the sound was fuzzed. The soothing pulse remained—it was likely doing its level best to shake the very building off its foundation—and Die found himself focusing on that. It drowned out the alarming rhythm of his own lungs and heart. By the time the music stopped with an answering roar from the assembled children, Die had calmed down enough to remain calm without the help of the beat. Even though he had salvaged stability he remained where he was; he didn’t feel like being jostled around in the exiting crowd. Once he could no longer hear the echoing clamor of dozens of voices he would dust himself off, slip outside unnoticed, and try to forget the whole embarrassing debacle.

“Well, on my list of things I did not expect to see today ‘respectable looking guy in a vest, tie, and top hat crouching down in the supply closet is probably in the top five.”

Cursing his thrice-damned luck, Die obstinately refused to look at the source of the voice. “Go away,” he ordered, his tone crisp and thankfully level.

“I don’t think so, bro,” came the reply. It was a man’s voice, deep but not terribly so. Without a visual it was hard to pinpoint how old the newcomer was, but from the sound of his voice Die would have to guess the upper end of what would be considered college age. The stranger sounded a little hoarse but his voice was still what would be considered conventionally pleasant. Given the particular way he enunciated his words clearly without sounding overly precise Die suspected that there was some sort of theater or choir training in the boy’s background, fighting with the drawl that blurred some of the syllables together.

Die realized he was overanalyzing and shut down the train of thought. They were an unwelcome visitor and that was all that need be known. This wasn’t a visitor to the estate, someone whose mannerisms had to be dissected so that their needs might be anticipated and relevant small talk might be made.

“I will be leaving shortly,” Die said, irritation coloring his voice but it was still level. Nothing more than the dregs of his earlier panic remained. His sense of stability was helped along by how quickly he had begun to analyze the stranger who he still would not turn eyes to, because after all he was the absolute best butler trained in the old ways. That was a fact, because if he wasn’t then he wouldn’t be working at Felt Manor then would he? Die hung onto it like a raft. Except he wasn’t drowning anymore; he was getting his bearings and swimming to shore. The Doctor was a perfectionist and if Die wasn’t exceptional then he wouldn’t still be living and working at Felt Manor. For all his rank dysfunction, The Doctor believed he was a good butler and Die was going to make himself believe that too.

The stranger, for his part, stood there silently for a couple long minutes. At last, Die’s skepticism over his ability to function when faced with another human being was overridden by his irritation. He glared up at the newcomer and snapped, “Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s impolite to stare?”

Then Die blinked, flummoxed, as the stranger was the musician he had come there to see.

The musician raised an eyebrow, a gesture nearly lost behind the sunglasses still on his face. “You’re standing between me and my cases.” He pointed and Die glanced over his shoulder. The cases were free of dust and encrusted in stickers. “Gotta protect the equipment. Traveling across the state in a pick-up made when shock absorbers were little more than a fond dream is an extreme sport for a turntable held together by duct tape and a prayer. You’re not going to deprive my gear of its jockstrap are you?”

Definitely from the south, though he’d lived in New England long enough for the local flavor to creep in. Probably originally from Texas, though the musician’s origin mattered little as the accent did not speak of Louisiana and therefore wherever he came from it was inferior to New Orleans. The boy also seemed to like the sound of his own voice, though Die supposed that trait came with being a vocal musician.

However much Die tore the boy apart in his mind, he could not deny that the request was a reasonable one. He was standing between someone’s property, someone who apparently had a state to drive across, and however maddening the whole situation was Die was not so discourteous to stand in the way of someone else’s livelihood.

“Of course,” he managed at last. Die stood and brushed the dust off his knees and was relieved to find that his hands were not shaking. His chest ached but his breathing and heart rate had returned to something approximating normal. Die felt reasonably certain that he wasn’t going to fall prey to his own insecurities again on that night. Even if he did, he was sure that he would be able to exit the building, hail a cab, and get back to the safety of his own room before it happened. There was nothing to fear. He was in control.

The musician continued staring—or possibly his eyes were closed behind those bafflingly angular lenses—as Die adjusted his clothing. “Sweet vest. That fabric looks like its hand woven, right? Leave it to me to get that wrong; Little Miss Tentacle would strangle me with her circulars. Hey, did you make that yourself?”

Die leapt to the obvious conclusion. He put everything he had into a withering glare. “I fail to see what it matters to a child such as yourself, but—“

“Whoa, whoa,” the musician said, putting his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “All right, I can see where that would be a legitimate reaction to a twenty-something cool guy asking something like that. Don’t worry, bro, the scariest person I know knits.”

“... Really?” Die asked suspiciously. He went over the conversation in his head and realized that the boy had mentioned a ‘miss tentacle’ strangling him with her circulars. Knowing what circular knitting needles were did lend credence to the claim.

“Man, you have no idea.” The musician’s tone was one of exaggeration but he still sounded sincere. “She’s even learning how to spin her own thread, which is fantastic because she’s perpetually walking around with off white wool fuzz all over her nigh exclusively darkly colored skirts.”

Die stared.

“She’s my lil’ sis, by the way,” the boy continued. “This one time she was knitting a pair of socks, I think or maybe some gloves? The details aren’t important, the important thing was that she was knitting in public and some asshole came up and started giving her shit. She just sat there and listened and when they finally wound down she had this little smile on her face. Twisted her needles around and idly commented on the pros and cons of using cured intestines in place of yarn.” He laughed. “I’ve never seen anyone sputter so much. It was a thing of beauty.”

The musician paused as if he expected Die to say something, and when he was met with baffled silence he continued. 

“You seem like a formal guy, so how about a formal introduction? My name is Matthew Dirk Strider. It’s nice to meet you, random guy dressed to the nines.”

“Actually my number is six,” Die absently corrected. He had been thrown by the appreciative story the musician had told about sisters who threatened to knit someone’s entrails. 

“My bad, nice to meet you, random guy dressed to the sixes. That hat probably costs more than my truck... okay, that’s not actually much of an accomplishment, I think that my hat costs more than my truck. Regardless, it’s a nice hat.”

After an attack Die tended to bounce between sharp analytical clarity, as he had experienced when he automatically evaluated the boy’s accent, and a fuzzy sort of fog. Similar to how he’d lost the momentum of anger and had crashed into the panic, he’d lost the momentum of his assumptions and wasn’t quite sure what to do about the stranger who was being a passable form of friendly. Die couldn’t for the life of him figure out why the musician was behaving in such a way when it would have been perfectly understandable of he had simply thrown Die out of the room and retrieved his cases.

When Die reached that muffled, cloudy stage he tended to speak without choosing his words so carefully.

“I didn’t make the vest,” he said hazily. “What I mean to say is that I didn’t cut and sew it. That was Stitch. He’s nine, and a tailor, so I suppose he would be the one dressed to the nines.” Dimly, Die was aware that the Doctor’s errant daughter assigning the core staff to pool balls had little relevance, and the musician wasn’t in on the joke so it was even more pointless to mention, but he kept talking. “But I wove it. The fabric that made the vest, that is.”

“On a loom and everything?” The boy—Strider—did the thing where he lifted an eyebrow above the tinted lenses. “Sweet.”

“It’s Die.”

It was the musician’s turn to stare in silence.

“My name,” Die shook his head to try and get his thoughts back in line. “It’s... my name is... I mean, my name is Émile. Damien Ismay Émile.”

“Okay. Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Damien.”

“I don’t go by Damien.”

Strider tilted his head to the side. “Oh, okay, right. Demon kid on a tricycle. At least you got some rocking initials out of it. Pleased to meet you, Die.”

Die was in that state where he second guessed everything in a delayed sort of way, and while his gut was saying that the musician wasn’t being insincere the nagging stew of negative thoughts spoke otherwise. Logic made a fair battle to be heard but it was shouting through a thick wall of cotton.

“I came to get your autograph,” Die said, falling back on the ill-conceived plan. He pulled the doll out of his pocket and fretfully turned it over in his hands. “My employer’s stepgrandaughter... well, she thought this would be a good idea and I was a fool to listen, but I’m here now. I have—I make—that is, I was led to believe that you think dolls would be... cool?”

His endeavor suddenly revealed itself as in its full breathtaking foolhardiness. In his nervousness Die dropped the doll. Deciding that the whole night was a lost cause, he gathered the frayed ends of his dignity and his courage so that he could slip around the musician and get out of there. However, his new plan was thwarted when Strider darted down to the floor quick as a flash and picked up the fallen doll.

“Neat pocket-dude, bro,” the musician commented.

For all Die understood of that short sentence it might as well have been another language, and not one of the three he knew. “Uh,” he intelligently added.

“The body’s not woven right?” the boy said as he turned it over in his hand. “Did you knit that, or...”

“Crochet,” Die corrected automatically.

“Okay.” There was a long pause. “So, you got a pen?”

Die still felt a bit lost, but he was starting to suspect that pity was playing a factor. He did not have any use for pity, no matter how pathetic he truly was. “Why would you sign it?” He snapped. “This was a terrible idea, it was irrational, and there’s no good reason for the idiotic plan to work.”

Strider looked as though he was expecting that response. He looked amused, in fact, and with a careless shrug he said, “I like your style. Sounds like a good reason to me.”

“So, what is this then? You think we’d be great friends?” Die scoffed. To his surprise the boy snorted derisively.

“I’m pretty sure if we went out for coffee I’d strangle you before the sugar had a chance to melt,” Strider said in response. “That doesn’t mean I can’t like your style, bro. You’re rocking the top hat and this who ensemble. You apparently own a loom, and how many people even know what a loom looks like? I sure as hell don’t. And you make vests on it with some kind of jagged patterns on them. Plus it’s pretty clear you don’t apologize for any of this, and that’s a quality I can respect.”

Die blinked as he absorbed the mini-speech. After a moment or two he felt his opinion of the musician climb a few rungs. He agreed with the sentiment that they’d kill each other if they tried to be friends—though he had a different opinion on who’d be doing the strangling—but the boy with the obnoxious rhymes made a good point. Die didn’t apologize for his interests no matter how irritating other people could sometimes be about some of them, and that was a respectable quality.

He held out the marker and Strider carefully made his mark on the doll’s vest. There was a scribble that may or may not have started with the letter ‘S’ and, for some inexplicable reason, a crude drawing of a dagger skewering the last few letters. Die pocketed the doll and the marker and decided not to say goodbye; the boy seemed to be in agreement about the lack of formalities and smoothly stepped to the side.

As Die stood in the line for cabs, he turned the doll over in his pocket as though it were a worry stone. He wasn’t going to show the others—his head was clear enough to know how bad of an idea that was—but he was still going to keep it. It wasn’t going to be a prized possession, in fact given a month he’d probably have it lost in one drawer or another, but every so often he’d come across it and remember that there was something of value under the anxiety.


End file.
